Web performance firm Site Confidence has shared some insight into the impact of this week's HP TouchPad fire sale on the UK e-tail community, revealing that hordes of consumers seeking out the bargain bucket £89 gadget had the same impact as a Lulzsec style malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

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"The huge amount of traffic being generated by consumers rushing to buy the heavily discounted technology is leading to very slow speeds onr etailetrs' websites and in some cases sites have been inaccessible," said Site Confidence's Bob Dowson.

"We've seen download speeds fall by as much as 200% for websites being reported to have stock on Twitter. Dabs experienced download speeds fall from an August average of 6.8 seconds to 17.5 seconds. Meanwhile, access to Micso's site was limited several times for several minutes," said Dowson.

Site Confidence claimed that the somewhat mystifying stampede for what is now, effectively, a glorified tea tray, generated more traffic than the now traditional Christmas iThing rush.

Warned Dowson: "Retail website functionality issues affect a company's revenue and reputation and send its customers into the open arms of competitors."

He added: "With retailers being impacted by such traffic spikes many may now decide that the small margins available on the HP TouchPad may not be worth the risk."

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